VietNamNet Bridge - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has conferred the order of the Legion d’honneur on Professor Ngo Bao Chau at the Elysee Palace.
The order was directly presented to him on February 27, said Chau.

The decree in this connection was signed on April 22, 2011, to honour Professor Chau’s great contributions to the French and Vietnamese education.

In 2010 he won the renowned Fields medal for his solution to a mathematic problem that remained unresolved for 30 years.

The scientific path of Ngo Bao Chau

Ngo Bao Chau was born in 1972 in Hanoi.  He is the only son of Professor Ngo Huy Can and Associate Professor Tran Luu Van Hien.  Chau went to the Giang Vo Experimental School before he majored in mathematics at The Hanoi University of Natural Sciences, now a part of Hanoi National University.

In the summer of 1988, Chau attended the International Mathematics Olympiad in Australia, where he won the gold medal. The next year, he again won the gold medal at the International Mathematics Olympiad in Germany.

In 1989, Chau went to France to study at Paris VI University. He successfully defended his doctorate thesis at the age of 25. In 2003, at the age of 31, he finished his habilitation thesis at Paris XI University and then became a professor at the university the following year.

In 1994, he married his long-term girlfriend, whom he had known since general school.  In 2004, Chau and Professor Gerard Laumon, his teacher, both received the annual research award from the Clay Mathematics Institute, which is given to only one or two people a year. Chau was the first Vietnamese person to win the award.

After winning the Clay award, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study invited Chau to become a researcher. The institute is known for gathering many of the leading mathematicians and physicists in the world, including those who have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals.

In 2005, at the age of 33, Chau was given the title of Professor in Vietnam, becoming the youngest professor in the country. One year later, he was invited to present the subcommittee report at the ICM in Madrid (Spain). He was the third Vietnamese person to receive the honor. The other two Vietnamese people to receive the honor include Professor F. Pham and Professor Duong Hong Phong.

After solving the ‘fundamental lemma’, he was given the Oberwolfach prize and a prize from the French Academy in 2007.  In June, his work, entitled “Le lemme fondamental pour les algèbres de Lie” was officially published in Publications Mathématiques de L’IHÉS magazine.

Though Chau works for leading scientific centers, he still spends time teaching in Vietnam.

Chau began working at the Mathematics Faculty of the University of Chicago in the US from September 1, 2010.

PV